Our youth are watching, and our behavior today will largely determine their future.

How in the world, one may well ask, has it come to this? I’ll tell you.  The term “civilized” is defined as: “marked by well-organized laws and rules about how people behave with each other. The expectation of a civilized people or society is that their behavior and their interaction with others be polite, reasonable, and respectful.” Throughout the history of mankind these traits have been encouraged and expected. If people wished to be accepted, well received and successful, they understood they were required to behave as though they were civilized. Young people observed these characteristics in all successful people. They were taught from an early age that there were consequences for bad or uncivilized behavior, and everything they observed in their church, their immediate family, the media, the professional world, and even politics for the most part, proved this to be true. Today, much of our society believes the opposite to be true.  Today civil, respectful behavior is placed in the same category as political correctness and actually discouraged and disparaged by much of society. Our youth today see coarse, crude, vulgar, disrespectful, foulmouthed behavior rewarded and encouraged in a way which would have been entirely unimaginable and abhorrent by all past generations.  They hear this behavior applauded and encouraged from the media, much of society, political candidates, elected leaders, and even the pulpit.  And then we ask how is this possible.  How we’ve degenerated to this point is no mystery.  Whether we care enough to reverse it by our own efforts and behavior is the question. One thing remains true: bad, irresponsible, uncivilized, disrespectful behavior has consequences. It has brought down entire civilizations in the past. It requires little imagination to envision that happening again.  Correcting this sad state of affairs relies on each one of us doing better ourselves and expecting better from others. Our youth are watching, and our behavior today will largely determine their future. SC